Editor's Note: It's my intention to post articles, both pro and con, about these candidates irrespective or what I think, and I think many of the views of some of these writers is more delusion than reality. However - after New Hampshire it will be much easier as I expect to see six or possibly even as few as four left.
The Bernie Bugle
The Bernie Insurgency - You listen to Bernie Sanders and hear something familiar. The party establishment has been corrupted by big money. It hasn’t achieved the promises it has made to voters. International trade has been a corrupt bargain for American workers. America has been too assertive and quick to take military action overseas and should work within international coalitions above all else. The mainstream of the party is much closer to the center than it is to the beliefs of its base....
Why Bernie Sanders Can't Govern - Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz have something in common. Both have an electoral strategy predicated on the ability of a purist candidate to revolutionize the electorate—bringing droves of chronic non-voters to the polls because at last they have a choice, not an echo—and along the way transforming the political system. Sanders can point to his large crowds and impressive, even astonishing, success at tapping into a small-donor base that exceeds, in breadth and depth, the remarkable one built in 2008 by Barack Obama. Cruz points to his extraordinarily sophisticated voter-identification operation, one that certainly seemed to do the trick in Iowa.
The Bernie Bugle
The Bernie Insurgency - You listen to Bernie Sanders and hear something familiar. The party establishment has been corrupted by big money. It hasn’t achieved the promises it has made to voters. International trade has been a corrupt bargain for American workers. America has been too assertive and quick to take military action overseas and should work within international coalitions above all else. The mainstream of the party is much closer to the center than it is to the beliefs of its base....
Why Bernie Sanders Can't Govern - Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz have something in common. Both have an electoral strategy predicated on the ability of a purist candidate to revolutionize the electorate—bringing droves of chronic non-voters to the polls because at last they have a choice, not an echo—and along the way transforming the political system. Sanders can point to his large crowds and impressive, even astonishing, success at tapping into a small-donor base that exceeds, in breadth and depth, the remarkable one built in 2008 by Barack Obama. Cruz points to his extraordinarily sophisticated voter-identification operation, one that certainly seemed to do the trick in Iowa.
Venezuela Is Socialist, Senator Sanders. Any Questions? - Like a skyscraper crane about to topple in high winds, Venezuela is teetering on the brink of a horrific economic collapse. It was brought on by one thing: socialism, taken to the hilt. Yet incredibly, neither Bernie Sanders nor his voters make this connection. It’s worrisome that so many Americans see socialism in a favorable light these days. A May 2015 YouGov poll showed that socialism was viewed favored favorably by 43% of Democrats, while a June 2015 Gallup poll showed that 47% of Americans would vote for a socialist.It points to a collective loss of memory. After all, it’s been decades since the fact that the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet empire collapsed. As chess champion Garry Kasparov has noted in “Winter Is Coming,” there have been no truth commissions or victory parades to institutionalize the monstrous idea’s discreditation and demise. In fact, the idea seems to be resurging in the U.S. Democratic Party, even with examples of its failures continuing, the latest example being Venezuela......
Sanders and Clinton Get Substantive... And Wrong - Thursday night’s Democratic debate in New Hampshire was, all commentators agreed, unusually substantive. Bernie Sanders has clearly gotten the idea that he might actually win this thing, and decided it was time to actually attack Hillary Clinton, rather than gamely smiling and saying she was a nice lady, but what about Glass-Steagall? Clinton fought back, politely deriding Sanders as warm-hearted but naïve, a rube whose impractical plans would never work. The result was certainly lively television -- at least, what passes for lively among people who really, really care about the proper treatment of key employee retention plans under the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.....
Bernie’s Stupid Free College Proposal - Bernie Sanders, everyones favorite socialist running for the American Presidency, has as one of the central tenets of his campaign that college should be free to all Americans. It seems to be a popular proposal with some, especially those paying the circumspect fees colleges are charging these days. It is just plain stupid and let me explain why......
The Bush Beacon
Jeb's Last Stand? - People want to like Jeb Bush. At least 700 folks packed into McKelvie Middle School this morning—most of them there a good 45 minutes before the candidate was expected to arrive. It was a real crowd, with another 200 or so overflowing outside the school. And that's not counting the hundred or so reporters on hand hoping to rubberneck at what has been a not great week for the candidate. What they get is vintage Bush, in just about every respect....
The Carson Courier
Ben Carson Takes Forever To Come To GOP Debate Stage, Kasich Forgotten - At the beginning of Saturday night's Republican presidential debate, the moderators called Ben Carson's name, but for some reason he didn't come out onto the GOP debate stage. He stayed back for a few minutes, and eventually came out. Then the moderators seemed to forget about John Kasich.
The Christie Crusader
Maybe Christie Should Have Taken On Donald Trump - We caught a glimpse of Chris Christie at Bruchetti’s Pizzeria in Sandown, New Hampshire, yesterday, where the New Jersey governor shook hands and swapped stories with locals and tourists during a brief visit. (Christie didn’t get a slice of pizza. We did.1) If you didn’t know any better, you might have assumed that Christie was in his element and near the top of the field in New Hampshire. He’s a more natural retail politician than some of the others in the Republican field, and he’s from the Northeast, which can sometimes be an advantage. Christie’s moderate conservatism also isn’t a bad fit for New Hampshire, although he’s more of a “big government conservative” than someone in “Live Free or Die” mode
The Cruz Chronicle
Ted Cruz Sets His Sights on Marco Rubio - Ted Cruz and his team are smarting over the attention paid to the third-place finisher in Iowa, Marco Rubio, joking that “bronze is the new gold.” When Mr. Cruz fields questions from voters about Donald J. Trump, he often manages to attack Mr. Rubio anyway. And at a raucous town-hall-style event here on Wednesday, Mr. Cruz seemed to startle the crowd when he called Mr. Rubio’s positions “virtually indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton’s.” As audience members murmured, Mr. Cruz laid out what he saw as Mr. Rubio’s betrayals of the conservative cause.....
Sanders and Clinton Get Substantive... And Wrong - Thursday night’s Democratic debate in New Hampshire was, all commentators agreed, unusually substantive. Bernie Sanders has clearly gotten the idea that he might actually win this thing, and decided it was time to actually attack Hillary Clinton, rather than gamely smiling and saying she was a nice lady, but what about Glass-Steagall? Clinton fought back, politely deriding Sanders as warm-hearted but naïve, a rube whose impractical plans would never work. The result was certainly lively television -- at least, what passes for lively among people who really, really care about the proper treatment of key employee retention plans under the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.....
Bernie’s Stupid Free College Proposal - Bernie Sanders, everyones favorite socialist running for the American Presidency, has as one of the central tenets of his campaign that college should be free to all Americans. It seems to be a popular proposal with some, especially those paying the circumspect fees colleges are charging these days. It is just plain stupid and let me explain why......
The Bush Beacon
Jeb's Last Stand? - People want to like Jeb Bush. At least 700 folks packed into McKelvie Middle School this morning—most of them there a good 45 minutes before the candidate was expected to arrive. It was a real crowd, with another 200 or so overflowing outside the school. And that's not counting the hundred or so reporters on hand hoping to rubberneck at what has been a not great week for the candidate. Maybe Christie Should Have Taken On Donald Trump - We caught a glimpse of Chris Christie at Bruchetti’s Pizzeria in Sandown, New Hampshire, yesterday, where the New Jersey governor shook hands and swapped stories with locals and tourists during a brief visit. (Christie didn’t get a slice of pizza. We did.1) If you didn’t know any better, you might have assumed that Christie was in his element and near the top of the field in New Hampshire. He’s a more natural retail politician than some of the others in the Republican field, and he’s from the Northeast, which can sometimes be an advantage. Christie’s moderate conservatism also isn’t a bad fit for New Hampshire, although he’s more of a “big government conservative” than someone in “Live Free or Die” mode
The Cruz Chronicle
Ted Cruz Sets His Sights on Marco Rubio - Ted Cruz and his team are smarting over the attention paid to the third-place finisher in Iowa, Marco Rubio, joking that “bronze is the new gold.” When Mr. Cruz fields questions from voters about Donald J. Trump, he often manages to attack Mr. Rubio anyway. And at a raucous town-hall-style event here on Wednesday, Mr. Cruz seemed to startle the crowd when he called Mr. Rubio’s positions “virtually indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton’s.” As audience members murmured, Mr. Cruz laid out what he saw as Mr. Rubio’s betrayals of the conservative cause.....
Cruz, Rubio, and the Moral Bankruptcy of Identity Politics - Here is the first reality of American identity politics: White progressives run the entire enterprise. Here is the second reality: That means sexual liberty trumps all, including racial equality. How else to explain the mainstream media’s gigantic yawn at the first Latino man in American history to win a major-party presidential caucus? Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio combined for 51 percent of the vote from a lily-white, conservative Iowa electorate, and no one seemed to mention race at all. Are we suddenly bored by “firsts” now? Or is there something wrong with Cruz and Rubio — something that has nothing to do with their heritage and everything to do with their politics? Writing in the New York Times, University of Southern California professor Robert Suro explored why the media response to this “first” was so muted. The piece is short because, as Suro notes, the answer is “not that complicated.”.....
The Way Ted Cruz Won in Iowa Suggests Trouble Ahead - Ted Cruz kept his hopes alive with a come-from-behind victory in the Iowa caucuses this week. But the way he won raises serious questions about his chances later on. He won Iowa for one reason: He excelled among people who described themselves as “very conservative.” They voted for him by a big margin; he won 44 percent of them to Donald Trump’s 21 percent, according to exit polls. He lost every other ideological category, and often by a lot. The national Republican primary electorate is far more moderate than Iowa’s, so Mr. Cruz will need to attract a far broader coalition. The history of recent conservative Iowa winners — like Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee — offers plenty of reasons to wonder whether he can count on doing so......
PolitiFact Attacks Ted Cruz for Accurately Quoting CNN at Debate - There was a bit of a dust-up between the Cruz and Carson campaigns in Iowa. On caucus night, Cruz's campaign sent out a message to supporters telling them that "CNN is reporting Ben Carson will stop campaigning after Iowa" and urging them to tell other caucusgoers this news, and it soon spread from there. This, of course, made it sound as if Ben Carson was dropping out. The Carson campaign was understandably peeved, and Cruz publicly apologized for his campaign soon after Iowa.At the debate Saturday, Cruz was again asked about the incident and he again apologized but also took the opportunity to explain what had happened. What Cruz said was pretty straightforward, yet for reasons I can't begin to understand, PolitiFact's reading of Cruz's remarks last night is completely unfair: "Ted Cruz falsely says CNN first said Ben Carson was 'taking a break from campaigning.' This is not a difficult matter to parse. Here's what Cruz said at the debate
The Way Ted Cruz Won in Iowa Suggests Trouble Ahead - Ted Cruz kept his hopes alive with a come-from-behind victory in the Iowa caucuses this week. But the way he won raises serious questions about his chances later on. He won Iowa for one reason: He excelled among people who described themselves as “very conservative.” They voted for him by a big margin; he won 44 percent of them to Donald Trump’s 21 percent, according to exit polls. He lost every other ideological category, and often by a lot. The national Republican primary electorate is far more moderate than Iowa’s, so Mr. Cruz will need to attract a far broader coalition. The history of recent conservative Iowa winners — like Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee — offers plenty of reasons to wonder whether he can count on doing so......
PolitiFact Attacks Ted Cruz for Accurately Quoting CNN at Debate - There was a bit of a dust-up between the Cruz and Carson campaigns in Iowa. On caucus night, Cruz's campaign sent out a message to supporters telling them that "CNN is reporting Ben Carson will stop campaigning after Iowa" and urging them to tell other caucusgoers this news, and it soon spread from there. This, of course, made it sound as if Ben Carson was dropping out. The Carson campaign was understandably peeved, and Cruz publicly apologized for his campaign soon after Iowa.
The Hillary HearldFBI, Intelligence Sources: Hillary's Debate Answer On Email Scandal Was Nonsense -
Email Scandal Spin: No, Hillary, Powell and Rice Didn't 'Do It Too' - Team Clinton seized on this report yesterday, claiming it was an email scandal "game-changer" that shifts the terrain of a controversy that has plagued Hillary's campaign for months. It is, and does, nothing of the sort, for reasons we'll address in a moment. First, the basics, via Politico:......, Hillary's server contained 1,600 classified emails and counting, including the most sensitive level of intelligence in existence (SAP, beyond-top-secret)......
Hillary Battles Bernie Sanders, Chick Magnet - Hillary Clinton first grabbed the national spotlight 47 years ago as an idealistic young feminist, chiding the paternalistic establishment in her Wellesley commencement speech. So it’s passing strange to watch her here, getting rebuffed by young women who believe that she lacks idealism, that she overplays her feminist hand and that she is the paternalistic establishment. Bernie Sanders may be a dead ringer for Larry David, but Hillary is running the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” campaign. She can’t fire up young voters by dwelling on what can’t be done in Washington and by explaining that she’s more prose than poetry.....
The Coming Hillary Meltdown? - Interesting tidings in the media the last 24 hours that suggest a smoldering volcano of Democratic discontent and near panic. The Democratic establishment has cleared the field for Hillary, and she’s having trouble putting away Bernie Sanders! If she can’t handle Bernie Sanders, how will she match up with a Republican nominee?......
Sanders and Clinton Get Substantive... And Wrong - Thursday night’s Democratic debate in New Hampshire was, all commentators agreed, unusually substantive. Bernie Sanders has clearly gotten the idea that he might actually win this thing, and decided it was time to actually attack Hillary Clinton, rather than gamely smiling and saying she was a nice lady, but what about Glass-Steagall? Clinton fought back, politely deriding Sanders as warm-hearted but naïve, a rube whose impractical plans would never work. The result was certainly lively television -- at least, what passes for lively among people who really, really care about the proper treatment of key employee retention plans under the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.....
Clinton Says Victory Is Still Possible in New Hampshire - Hillary Clinton is looking at the past as a possible prologue to next Tuesday's New Hampshire primary. Trailing Bernie Sanders in the Democratic contest by 20 percentage points or more in some polls of voters in the state, Clinton recalled that New Hampshire gave her a come-from-behind victory in the 2008 primary race and a dramatic boost to her husband, Bill Clinton, in his first run for the presidency in 1992. "I am not going to stop fighting for New Hampshire," she said Friday at a Manchester rally to kick off the final weekend of campaigning before the primary. "This state has been so good to my husband and me and my family.''
Hillary Clinton Should Play to Her Strengths - Twice in two nights now, the voters of New Hampshire (and television viewers across the nation) have had a chance to see Hillary Clinton answering questions at length. At times, she has looked like the President-in-waiting that she was supposed by many to be: smart, knowledgeable, persuasive. At other times, particularly when, during Thursday’s MSNBC debate, she accused Bernie Sanders of orchestrating a smear campaign against her, Clinton has appeared a bit rattled....
Bill Clinton's Legacy Haunts the Democratic Debate - Early in Thursday night’s Democratic debate in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton took a curious tack in answering Bernie Sanders’s accusations that she’s too beholden to Wall Street: She went after the Vermont senator for voting for a bill that her husband signed into law when he was president (and which she herself did not oppose). “While we’re talking about votes,” Clinton said, “you’re the one who voted to deregulate swaps and derivatives in 2000, which contributed to the over-leveraging of Lehman Brothers, which was one of the culprits that brought down the economy.” ....
Gloria Steinem demeans young women supporters of Sanders - Hillary Clinton’s surrogates are getting desperate in their efforts to persuade young voters to stop dumping Hillary in favor of Sanders. In Iowa, Sanders won 84% of the 17-29 demographic, a 70 point margin over Clinton, which has the old guard feminists in a panic.
So Gloria Steinem, who once upon a time (when she was young and pretty) celebrated young women as capable of making up their own minds, has now resorted to demeaning them for their support of Sanders. Eugene Scott of CNN:....
The Kasich KitschyThe Transformation of John Kasich - A year ago, John Kasich wasn’t running for president. He was enjoying the whispers about his moderate appeal in the quintessential purple state where he is governor. He was relishing the chance to tout his congressional bona fides and to watch the grins and head-shaking as the Kasich urban legends of old crept to the edges of public consciousness. My life has been like a movie, he told people. Something else he told people: If I run for president, and I look in the mirror at the end and can’t recognize myself, I’ve failed. Give Kasich credit. In an election season shaped by anti-establishment sentiment and conservative extremism, the Ohio governor mostly stuck by his message of experience and bipartisanship....
The Rubio Report
Rubio Started Night With Momentum and Then Choked - Marco Rubio knew exactly what he was doing on Saturday night. Marco Rubio knew exactly what he was doing on Saturday night. Marco Rubio knew exactly what he was doing on Saturday night.
The problem was he flubbed it.
Rubio awkwardly pivoted four times to a well-rehearsed line that President Barack Obama “knows exactly what he’s doing” as he tried to drill home the idea that he’s the inevitable general election candidate – an unforced error that his rivals pounced on and that quickly went viral. “There it is. There it is. The memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody,” Chris Christie charged.....
Chris Christie’s attacks rattle Marco Rubio - Chris Christie did not disappoint.The New Jersey governor had made it quite clear that when he stepped on the debate stage Saturday night here, three days before the New Hampshire primary, he would be looking to draw a very sharp contrast between himself and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. From the jump, Christie went after Rubio like an attack dog, tearing into the 44-year-old first-term senator and mocking his youth and inexperience. And Rubio, who increasingly has gathered momentum after a strong showing in the Iowa caucuses last week, was put on the defensive in a way that he has not been so far in this campaign.....
Marco Rubio Is a New Kind of Republican. Really. - Apparently Iowa Republicans don't want to make America great again. And that's just fine with the GOP elite, uttering a Monty Burnsian "excellent" over the prospect of Marco Rubio as the party's presidential nominee. The Florida senator is attracting new attention from donors and landing key endorsements in the wake of his third-place caucus finish. A strong showing in New Hampshire would further separate him from the other candidates in the "establishment" lane — Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and John Kasich. But given Rubio's support from what rival Ted Cruz might derisively call the "Washington Cartel," would he be a same-old, same-old Republican? The Week's Michael Brendan Dougherty writes that nominating Rubio would be "a statement that the party does not need a course correction." More pre-emptive wars for nothing, and tax cuts for free. Likewise colleague Damon Linker argues Rubio would be an even worse sequel to a pretty terrible film, that clunker being the Bush II presidency.....
Rubio's Foreign Policy Is Not Conservative - Lindsey Graham--whether it's Obamacare, whether it's the outrageous immigration situation, whether it's same-sex marriage, which is a decision the states should be making--Lindsey Graham keeps telling us to move on and to move along. When it comes to the massive national debt, Lindsey Graham supports it. When it comes to taking the United States military and sending ground troops in every hellhole all over the Earth, Lindsey Graham supports it. That's not conservatism, that's not being hawk, a that is utterly irresponsible and unconscionable.......And quite frankly I don't see a hell of a lot of distance between Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio....
'Marcomentum' stopped dead in its tracks after NH debate - It was the biggest stage Senator Marco Rubio had ever been on and he froze like a side of beef in a Kansas City meat locker. Following his surprising third place finish in Iowa and 5 days of ever rising poll numbers in the Granite State, Rubio had an opportunity to soar. Instead, he crashed and burned, leaving both his supporters and opponents wondering if he could recover.....
The Bullish and Bearish Cases for Rubio - The morning after Marco Rubio’s bad debate, a crowd of perhaps 550 packed into a high school cafeteria to see the candidate in the flesh. Outside, the Democratic PAC American Bridge sent two guys dressed up as robots to capitalize on Rubio's failure last night. The crowd seems receptive, but not jubilant. It seems like it's split about equally between people who are supporting the candidate and people who are shopping. And Rubio opens by referring to his debate misstep. He doesn't make a joke out of it, though. He tries to make a larger point, doubling-down and unpacking what he was saying.......
Rubio's Foreign Policy Is Not Conservative - Lindsey Graham--whether it's Obamacare, whether it's the outrageous immigration situation, whether it's same-sex marriage, which is a decision the states should be making--Lindsey Graham keeps telling us to move on and to move along. When it comes to the massive national debt, Lindsey Graham supports it. When it comes to taking the United States military and sending ground troops in every hellhole all over the Earth, Lindsey Graham supports it. That's not conservatism, that's not being hawk, a that is utterly irresponsible and unconscionable.......And quite frankly I don't see a hell of a lot of distance between Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio....
'Marcomentum' stopped dead in its tracks after NH debate - It was the biggest stage Senator Marco Rubio had ever been on and he froze like a side of beef in a Kansas City meat locker. Following his surprising third place finish in Iowa and 5 days of ever rising poll numbers in the Granite State, Rubio had an opportunity to soar. Instead, he crashed and burned, leaving both his supporters and opponents wondering if he could recover.....
The Bullish and Bearish Cases for Rubio - The morning after Marco Rubio’s bad debate, a crowd of perhaps 550 packed into a high school cafeteria to see the candidate in the flesh. Outside, the Democratic PAC American Bridge sent two guys dressed up as robots to capitalize on Rubio's failure last night. The crowd seems receptive, but not jubilant. It seems like it's split about equally between people who are supporting the candidate and people who are shopping. And Rubio opens by referring to his debate misstep. He doesn't make a joke out of it, though. He tries to make a larger point, doubling-down and unpacking what he was saying.......
The Trump Tribune
Donald Trump, the Classic European Candidate - American populism has a European streak - or perhaps it is the other way around. The way Donald Trump and his supporters operate is very much like on The Old Continent, right down to the seemingly incomprehensible contradictions. What may unite them is that many of their own supporters don't actually want them to have real power. Like in Europe, many followers of Trump-like populists have not been seen in voting booths for years, sometimes decades. Like in Europe, after polls suggest that these followers will turn up to vote, many on Election Day don't, leading to surprise losses when results come in. In the Netherlands one politician is once again riding high in the polls, outrunning all others by wide margins. Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party has for months outpaced all other figures with his tough talk on immigrants, Muslims, the European Union, and the establishment elite.......
Trump Won't Say If He'd Appoint Supreme Court Justices Who Disagree with Him on Eminent Domain - The February 7 GOP presidential debate was a good one for Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. With three days until the New Hampshire primary, where Trump has a commanding lead in the polls, his rivals spent most of the night fighting each other. The main story in the press coming out of the debate is that Marco Rubio, currently in second place in New Hampshire polls, had a disastrous night because he repeated the same criticism of Barack Obama four times. Rubio had thoughtful and substantive answers on topics like ISIS, religious liberty, and the right to life. But Chris Christie's mockery of Rubio's repetitive remarks about Obama was the highlight of the night in the
No comments:
Post a Comment